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We’ve noticed a curious lack of consistency in how Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber employs his bully pulpit.

Or, in this case, bully word-processing program.

On Wednesday the governor sent a letter to several federal officials urging them to undertake a multi-year (and no doubt, multimillion-dollar) study of the possible effects of transporting coal from Montana and Wyoming to ports in Oregon and Washington.

This coal would be shipped across the Pacific Ocean to Asia where several countries — China, of course, among them — would burn the coal to produce electricity to run their burgeoning economies.

(Yes, some countries actually have such things.)

To be sure, Kitzhaber’s concerns are not the ravings of a Chicken Little.

We’re no prudes, but our skepticism is aroused whenever someone insists that getting naked was necessary to make a political point.

The most convincing arguments can be delivered at least as effectively, we’d wager, by a person who is clothed.

Nudity, you’ve no doubt noticed, tends to distract people, and thus detract from the position being advanced.

All of which is to say we think the statement John Brennan, the Portland man who shed his clothes recently at Portland International Airport, was trying to make was as blurry as the videos of his antics broadcast on TV.

Brennan, who was annoyed at being detained by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents, described the U.S. airport security system as “broken.”

It’s annoying, to be sure. So is waiting in line at Disneyland. But you don’t often hear about people stripping at the entrance to Space Mountain.

So now everyone embroiled in the debate over the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest’s Travel Management Plan (TMP) can take a deep breath.

Wallowa-Whitman Supervisor Monica Schwalbach on Tuesday withdrew her decision, announced March 15, to ban motor vehicles from about 3,600 miles on 1.3 million acres of the forest.

A wise choice.

It quickly became apparent that the alternative Schwalbach picked back in March would have banned rigs from a lot more roads than many local residents expected.

Too many roads, we believe.

The pertinent issue, though, is which roads should be taken off that original closure list.

Fred Warner Jr., chairman of the Baker County Board of Commissioners, pointed out that, based on the diligent work of local volunteers who inventoried roads, about 30 percent of the forest roads in Baker County aren’t being used by motor vehicles.

“Closing” those roads would have a theoretical rather than an actual effect on the public. And indeed, most of those roads were slated to be closed in the postponed TMP.

But the plan also closed, in some areas, not only redundant roads, which roughly parallel a nearby road, but both of those roads.

The revised plan should be based on Alternative 3 in the final environmental impact statement. That option would close about 1,800 miles, roughly half the mileage in Schwalbach’s initial decision.

That’s still a lot of roads. But it’s an option that comes much closer to achieving the “balance” between preserving motorized access, and reducing its effects on wildlife and habitat, that Schwalbach is aiming for.

Burying the electric, cable TV and other utility lines that currently run overhead along Resort Street downtown certainly would make this important arterial more attractive.

And the timing, at least in theory, is right, with the city preparing for a $2.3 million project next year that will rebuild the street and sidewalks, and install benches and plants. That money comes from the state.

Holes, suffice it to say, will be dug regardless.

But the price of burying the utilities is simply too high for city residents to bear.

There’s much we don’t yet know — and might never know — about the killing of Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla.

What seems clear from the limited information that is available, though, is that Martin should be alive today.

With the great advantage of hindsight — and even accounting for that scarcity of facts — we can conclude only that the episode that ended with George Zimmerman fatally shooting Martin in the chest with a handgun need not have started.

But when the alternative could take a larger bite from the city’s budget, we at least understand.

The $57,000 in this case is money the city could, in theory, collect from Seven Iron LLC, the company, owned by Billy Cunningham, that has managed the city-owned Quail Ridge Golf Course for close to a decade.